


Go and Look

by lilsmartass



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gallifrey, Gen, Introspection, Pre series, When they were young
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-11
Updated: 2014-08-11
Packaged: 2018-02-12 18:50:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2120841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilsmartass/pseuds/lilsmartass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary: The Doctor has had many adventures, but what keeps him moving through the stars?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Go and Look

**Author's Note:**

> Rating: PG-13  
> Disclaimer: Not mine unless you count the impressive collection of DVDs I have to my name.  
> Genre: introspection, pre-series, Gallifrey  
> Beta: none, all mistakes are mine  
> A/N: I appreciate that this does somewhat ignore Susan, implying that the Doctor left Gallifrey when he was much younger. For the purposes of this fic, let’s assume he went back and settled after a while before leaving to become the Doctor we know so well.

** Go and Look **

 

Once upon a time, on a planet far away, there was a little boy. As little boys are wont to do, he often bragged to his friend of the feats of courage and daring and adventure he intended to face when he was older. When he left. And leave, he assured his friend stead-fastedly, he would, for he had no intention of spending his life looking at the same sky and only talking of other places. No, that was no life for one such as him.

And yet, the little boy never strayed far from home, never wandered too far into the wilds of his own planet. There was no point in courting danger and trouble and remonstrance _now_ , he told himself.

No point in being watched.

No point in being discouraged from the adventures he intended to have.

And one day, the little boy realised that he was no longer so little. That he was now a youth on the cusp of adulthood and that he was still in the same grassland, with the same friend, telling the same stories.

The bigger boy sat up, and looked around, still babbling to his friend, not truly listening even to himself. It seemed to him that he was noticing things that had long been familiar as though they were entirely new. He pointed to the West, over the grassland, to where it dropped away into the horizon and eyes were of no more use.

“We’ve never been that way,” he said. “What’s over there?”

And his friend, who was tired by now of the constant questions and insistences, who wanted to left in peace to build the dam he was creating to give him control of the small channel of irrigation passing near them, didn’t even look up. “How would I know? Go and look.”

So the bigger boy went. He walked, for miles, and in the distance, beyond the horizon, he found a small factory outbuilding. A building used for processing decommissioned travelling vehicles. The boy knew that when he set out on his travels he would need such transport. Not one of these of course, in his imaginings, he travelled in something top of the line, something to make everyone remark on his taste.

But these would be good to look at. Just to look at. For now.

The one at the end, the smallest of all even with its special mechanics, was dusty and decommissioned, and dead.

And yet.

_And yet._

The screens did not jump to life as he paced the drive room, but their blackness showed him ghostly reflections that might be the tools on the walls and his own cautious movements, or might be places that this remarkable vehicle has been. Might be the memories of the things she has seen.

There was an old directory on the floor. A list of planets, numerically ordered.

He picked one at random.

“What’s over there?” He wondered aloud.

She answered him, deep in his mind, the words of his friend echoing in her chimes. “I don’t know. Go and look.”

And he so does.


End file.
